This week — October 24 – 30, 2010 — is National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week (NLPPW).
“Lead exposure can have serious, life-altering health effects,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, “especially for our children. Those effects are entirely preventable if we take the right steps to raise awareness and give every family the tools they need to protect against lead exposure. [italics mine]
About lead
Earlier this month, EPA slapped Doe Run Company, America’s largest lead producer, with serious penalties. And earlier this year, FDA tested lipstick and found lead in every single one. Lipstick is supposedly not dangerous because women “don’t eat lipstick,” as one defender-of-industry put it. That is pretty much wrong – we eat a lot of the stuff we put on our lips; but that’s a story for another blog post. More on lead in cosmetics here and here.
Lead is a soft but dense, ductile, bluish-white metal. Lead is highly malleable, quite corrosion-resistant, and has poor electrical conductivity when compared to most other metals (for further info see Wikipedia); for all those qualities it is used widely in the Construction Industry.
Lead is considered a “stable” material — get ready for this — it has a half-life longer than the age of the universe.
Lead is also toxic.
About lead and children
According to official U.S. documents, lead paint poisoning affects more than 1 million children today. Unbelievable.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that nearly a quarter of a million children living in the United States have blood lead levels high enough to require public health intervention (2003–2004 data). Major sources of lead exposure among children are:
- lead-based paint
- lead-contaminated dust found in deteriorating buildings
Really: lead poisoning is entirely preventable. But how?
When asked what we can do as consumers, EPA suggests “testing.” Test for lead levels in the house, test for lead in children.
There are a couple of problems with that.
One is, if I did all the testing that EPA suggests I do in the home, I’d be broke. We’re supposed to test the water for all sorts, test the air quality for all sorts, and now test the — what — dust (?) for all sorts. Who can afford the cost of the tests? The undertaking would break the Kennedys too.
Never mind the time and the Project Management (PM) skills and PM software needed to manage the myriad test results and keep them up to date.
In that same vein, as it were: how many tests are we supposed to give our children, exactly? And how many of these hurt?
Anyway – there’s a reference site for Lead Free Kids. That’s EPA’s Lead Awareness Week web site. It’s pretty helpful, but you have to have the time/mind to review it.
Lead poisoning symptoms
EPA says: Lead causes a variety of adverse health effects, including brain and nervous system disorders, high blood pressure and hypertension, and reproductive problems. For children, even low levels of exposure to lead can cause a host of developmental effects such as learning disabilities, decreased intelligence and speech, language, and behavioral problems, which can affect children for a lifetime.
For help in your area, try this web page. You can search your location by zip code for lead resources, lead-free buildings, and the like: http://www.leadfreekids.org/leadRes.html?tabmode=zip
Reference link: http://epa.gov/lead/pubs/lppw2010.htm
Latest news from EPA on lead: http://www.epa.gov/lead/new.htm
Deepforestgreen -- Blog 